Damaso Reyes is a good friend of mine who’s spending some time abroad pursuing a variety of journalistic fellowships. His website The Europeans is filled with interesting images from his journeys. His most recent photoessay is on the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN currently being built. It will eventually become the world’s largest machine.
I made my way to CERN’s reception area where I was greeted by fellow American Katie Yurkewicz who would be my guide through the world of particle physics. Several people have asked my both how I came to learn about CERN and why I chose to go there to photograph. The simple answers are how couldn’t you have heard about CERN and why wouldn’t you want to go there? Seriously CERN has been in the news for years, especially recently because they are building the world’s largest particle accelerator.
At 27 km in diameter, this will also be the world’s most powerful, allowing the physicists there to smash protons together at close to the speed of light. And it is a great example of European cooperation with scientists from all over the continent, not to mention the world, contributing their knowledge.
Of course you ask why would anyone want to do such a thing? The answer is by doing so the scientists hope to create conditions close to those which existed just after the creation of our universe in order to find some exotic and rare particles like the Higgs Boson, particles which have been theorized as being the smallest and most basic building blocks which make up our universe, but have yet to be found.
I think we’ll never know everything, but the more we know the better off we are.
Alix, that was amazing. Beyond comprehension of how they can figure all that out so that it actually works. Imagine the schematics for that beast. The combined knowledge and abilities of those scientists is truly god-like…. they even had Jesus working for them. 😉
Thanks Alix.
I read a bit of that website. It made me remember something I thought of long ago:
Physicists really do busts their butts and their brains for their jobs, all in the name of pure curiosity and imagination. They’re like brilliant highly educated children with gray hair. Kind of like John. 🙂
I am really glad to see this happening. I only wished Americans had the visionary fortitude to have completed the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, canceled by Republican Congress in 1993.
The SSC was going to be a ring particle accelerator which was planned to have a ring circumference of 87 km (54 miles) and an energy of 20 TeV per beam, potentially enough energy to create a Higgs boson, a particle predicted by the Standard Model, construction began in 1991.
Clinton attempted to prevent the cancellation by requesting Congress continue “to support this important and challenging effort” through completion because “abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science…”
Well you can chock up another example of Republicans losing yet another area of world leadership for the USA. It’s soo ironic Americans are willing to spend 1000 billion dollars on a war of lies, yet can’t stomach spending a few billion on research into truth. AMERICANS ARE JUST STUPID, TV COUCH POTATOES.
Just if anyone knows – – -the Texas machine was to be almost 3 times larger. So if the midget machine works in Europe, will Big Brother still have a reasonable justification to be built or would being the worlds biggest be enough?
In other words, is it true we can’t build a machine to accelerate a paticle to the speed of light because then its mass would be infinitely large? If so, then how large a machine do we need to get what it is we can reasonably get?
And in a world of limited resources, shouldn’t “all” research money be spent on becoming energy independent? Afterall, why have fun when there is work to do? ((Who knows where this project will take us is not a fair response! The bias of science should be revealed by making the scientists lie about what we can expect for our money. Afterall, they are just people too!))
Yea I am with #4, “in a world of limited resources” (unless you support a War based on lies and Haliburtian contracts).
Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy in January 30, 2003 had it 1/2 right::
“By the time our young children reach middle age, fusion may begin to deliver energy independence … and
energy abundance … to all nations rich and poor. Fusion is a promise for the future we must not ignore.”
We need to accelerate fusion research and make it market viable sooner not later. This country needs a Kennedy like vision of putting a man on the moon, except with fusion!!!
But here again the US has no scientific leadership. Only in January 2003 did BUSHIE decide for the U.S. to join the ITER NEGOTIATIONS.
Before BUSHIE we did have Princeton Plasma
Physics Laboratory Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (funded by Department of Energy’s, experiments produce 10 Megawatts of power (lasting about a second). But we pulled the funding and dismantled it. I got to visit it before they shut it down. WE CAN’T AFFORD IT. LET SPEND THE LITTLE BIT OF MONEY ON A WAR OF LIES INSTEAD.
We are just becoming a Nation of World Class Ignorant Asses!!!!
I predict we’ll all be driving particle accelerators by 2050.
5–Great Post. I have no knowledge at all “but I believe” that Big Oil got fusion researched terminated so that we would continue our oil addiciton.
Far fetched? Not when their track record is to buy up mass transit systems and throw them away. They (Big Oil and BushCo) are bastards and only our limited memory and christian good will inhibit our calling them on it.
6. Good one.
What is the pricetag of this thing?
http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon1.htm
I found this link a while ago when I started doubting the safety of producing mini black holes in the lab. The amount of money spent on the LHC means its a foregone conclusion that it will run no matter the outcome of any independent safety assessment. While I applaud the technical know-how that goes into something like this and welcome the knowledge it will deliver, I just hope the bloody thing doesn’t wipe us out.
I made 3 HD-quality video from inside CERN Hadron Collider which I posted on my blog http://charbax.com/category/cern/
Thanks for checking it out.. I interview engineers and one of the guys responsible for the largest computer grid network for scientific research as well as I film in HD from the huge Hadron Collider.
they stopped building the one in texas because they we so far behind CERN..
so they dropped that project and joined CERN
and the price
another gold star for Clinton
9—Wow! Cant say I understood most of it but “if” there is a reasonable chance that earth will be sucked into an accreting micro black hole, then I have to ask what is the up side that counterbalances this risk?
I’ve read there was a similar concern about the first A-Bomb. ie–the chain reaction would continue non stop. Course now, too easy to poo-poo.
Lots of sci-fi has this scenario, lets hope our grandchildren will still be here to read those stories?
9, 12,
I believe that any small black hole if created would evaporate via hawking radiation.
Any block holes created by a particle accelerator would be so small that they would immediately evaporate and explode via Hawking radiation. It would NOT eat the Earth. Jeez guys.
14,
Neener-neener!
😉
Gee Mr Spock sounds like the Genisis Project
CERN is going to prove that the universe was created when residents of the previous universe figured out how to create a “super conducting supercollider” and blew themselves up.
13-14-15==Ok, splain this away:::
“However, Hawking evaporation has never been tested. In several surveys, physicists have estimated a non trivial probability that Hawking evaporation will not work. [Ref. 9] My estimate of its risk of Hawking evaporation failure is 20%, or perhaps as much as 30%.”
So, 20% chance we end life in this solar system for the upside that we can “learn” what?
18,
The universe is far more resilient than that, let’s say I don’t believe that we can harness enough energy to create more than a whisper of a black hole. Having said that, don;t forget that this is all occurring in a vacuum chamber. As everything is highly charged so the magnetic fields can maniplate them any resulting black hole would also have a charge and be held in containment.
Even in “Hole Man” the guy had to turn off the magnetic field for the black hole to fall out of the machine.
19—So why did the author quote surveys of physicists who haven’t seen that movie? Seemsto me such surveys are worthless and should not be referenced!!
But I do recall a Star Trek episode where the ion/impulse engines were shut down incorrectly and an entire planet was blown up.
I guess thats why movies are better than tv.
I believe the definition of a Black Hole, like the tiny one that could have been created in Texas, has something to do with inescapably sucking in of money.
I see this image with a background of poverty, pestilence, HIV, cancer, natural disaster, the uneducated, etc. and in the foreground a single scientist in exclamation and holding something between his fingers: “Hey! … A Higgs boson!”
RBG
Despite your “witty” and unsuccessful attempt at trivializing the enterprise, working toward understanding and leveraging the fundamental laws of existence in order to address forthcoming crises that may affect the very existence of humankind – before those crises arrive and it’s far too late to do anything about it – yes, it is more important than any of the chronic social issues you cite, including ‘natural disaster’, something which, you may not realize, no amount of money diverted from research will ever stop…
20–Sorry, I assumed the link was a movie, and it was a book. Same effect though ((and I do recognize the humor you brought to the subject–but you still did miss the legitimate conceern right?))
21–Good One. It is inceed rare our Congress pasted up this midnight earmark special. Probably because the fraudsters behind this one is not the traditional group of corporate hyprocrits. Those scientists too often don’t know how the pay-back game is played.
22–I honestly think you miss the point. As you noted, this project is pushing the laws of EXISTENCE. Given that, it is fair to ask what the upside benefit will be for risking our existence. How is that trivial? How is that even disrespecting science, even pure science, as you seem to think?
I too think science is our salvation but that means that everything needs to be questioned. If there is a “credible” risk of annihilation, I think our money should be spent elsewhere searching for other existential data points before the questions are known. Right now, Energy independence (for the world) seems the best subject to study==the returns benefitting the growth of all areas of human activity.
#10, Charbax … very interesting video. Lots of interesting info but you repeated questions a lot. It sounds like it was very loud there so maybe it was hard to hear the answers. Regardless of my peanut gallery 2 cents, thanks for sharing.
If there were actually a credible – that is to say, nontrivial – likelihood of the sort of scenario described, I’m completely confident that the project would not proceed. Physicists, both as a group and as individuals, have no more interest in destroying the planet than you do, and probably a great deal less.
When scientists say a given risk is acceptable, and laymen disagree, the smart money is always on the ones who know the subject matter, not the ones who have watched one too many SF movies…
Many physicists are strange people, and that’s a fact – but very, very few indeed are reckless, clueless idiots ready to risk the existence of mankind merely to satisfy idle curiosity.
25—So the physicists who responded that there was such a risk were—what? Its ok, have your own faith based bias.
Actually, without naming those scientist I wonder if the survery even actually took place, but my faith based bias is doubt and suspicion.
Again though you simply fail to engage the issue===what is the risk benefit analysis??? What is it we might learn and what is that worth compared to other pressing needs.
We are born in ignorance and learn by a complex interactive variable process of exposure, experience, and ability to comprehend.
I don’t understand the physics at all, but I do undeerstand whether or not a question has even been answered.
Maybe we’ll finally discover the answer to Fermi’s Paradox.
“The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for or contact with such civilizations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Doh!
RBG
The universe is safe; it’s a fair bet that something as insignificant as Humanty could blow it up.
I keep forgetting, I have a bone to pick with you, Alix,.. 🙂
“It will eventually become the world’s largest machine.”
In the timeless words of Bela Lugosi; ‘I beg. To differ.’
Isn’t it already the world’s largest machine, just not fully assembled yet? And if not, why not?
27—Nice website, it includes every reason I have ever thought of and many more.
Carl Sagan formulized all those possibilities on his Nova series with the conclusion that finding intelligent life in the Universe was so rare as to be almost non-existent. Course that show came on after Fermi assumed the opposite.
Nice to see that that website doesn’t assume that Physicists wont blow up their civilization–it is listed as a risk. As it should be.